"Perhaps Will Smith gives his best dramatic performance in "I Am Legend." Or maybe he just seemed a better actor because he actually shut the hell up for a change. Regardless, Smith was the right choice for the role and is the only consistently good aspect about this movie.

The monsters--vombies or zampires or whatever--look realistic enough, although their design is rather derivative and uninventive. The creatures needed more personality, more creativity, in order to separate them from many other similar monsters in recent films.

The flashbacks in the first hour of the film create an interesting frame of reference but don't really provide any character development. You get the standard scene with Smith telling his family to get out of the city and how he must fix the problem, with a monster throwing itself against the car window for a cheap scare. The deaths of his wife and kid don't hit you in the gut like they should, mainly because you know so little about these people. The story would have benefited from more backstory and some engaging characterization.

The first hour or so of the movie is fantastic. The film keeps your attention, the direction especially strong during dark moments. But everything falls apart when two more human characters enter the mix.

I don't believe this woman and her son would have survived a trip out of their original location and into and around New York. I don't believe they are capable of saving Smith. But whatever. The point is that everything goes downhill when they arrive.

Soon, the three humans are attacked by a final swarm of vombies or zampires or whatever, and excitement builds reasonably. The survivors make their way to Smith's lab, Smith's earlier experiment to cure the infected bitch finally worked. How coincidental. He snatches the cure and shoves it into the hands of the woman. That's when he predictably becomes legendary or, rather, "Legend" himself, blowing the vombies or zampires to bits with the most explosive single grenade ever seen in any movie (including every nonstop action movie and war picture).

But wait, I forgot about this very important detail: the butterfly. For a couple of minutes, a solid wall of glass is the only thing that separates the survivors from the goddamn-don't-we-look-like-many-other-monsters-from-recent-films posse. The head vombie or zampire--let's call him Bart, since he's a troublemaker--begins ramming into the glass. Cracks develop in the wall as Bart continues his barrage of rams, the cracked glass forming a shape that resembles a butterfly. Now this is important. Earlier in the film, Smith's daughter referred to a butterfly in an utterly forgettable line. Again this is important to the script of the film, and the main character of the movie knows the screenwriters personally and how epiphanic this moment should be. He glances over to find a tiny butterfly tattoo on the neck of the egg plant woman, and he realizes everything in the script is coming together, almost like a necklace of flowers tied by the blowing wind.

So he becomes "Legend," the butterfly signaling the transformation. Coincidentally, butterflies are natural transformations themselves, which makes this a pretty deep movie.

Alas, the movie doesn't end after the explosion. The egg plant woman and her child make it to a camp of surviving humans, despite the fact that the audience has no reason to believe they're capable or competent travelers--or even legitimate humans for that matter, given their wooden portrayals. The cure is in the right hands at the end of the film, and the movie repeats itself before the credits: Smith's character is "Legend." "

SO mainly the gist of it is, if you were dumb enough to read that entire chunk..
is that the movie was great from the start. i like the way Will Smith portrays his character. you can feel his loneliness just from his facial expressions when he goes about doing his things.. the way he droops his shoulder when he walks..

and one of the best part of the movie is the one where the zombies set up the dummy in the streets. you see his reaction?! he went totally ballistic. too crazy after being alone for so long. haha the butterfly thing was really good i think. deep shit. haha but i understood. XD and the bob marley reference was good too i think.

"light up the darkness."

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